


Hair of the Dog

by thisiszircon



Series: The Moment of Awakening [9]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 13:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12607436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: Ace's emotions have been on a roller-coaster ride of late, but those adventures in time and space continue regardless.  A distress signal has led the TARDIS to mid-21st-century Kent.  Something has happened that seems to link a meteorite strike, a vegetable garden and a spaniel.  The Doctor and Ace investigate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to my invaluable beta-reader and editor, [Nemo the Everbeing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing)

_Hever, Kent  
May 2054_

 

"Biscuit!"

Ace jumped.  Up until this point, their hostess, Mrs. Bulwell – the kind of lady you would associate with phrases such as 'twinset and pearls' and 'don't forget to warm the pot' – had been polite and softly spoken.  The high-pitched shriek was startling, especially in the context of this oh-so-civilised tea on the patio.  Ace could only suppose that Mrs. Bulwell had either an emphatic enthusiasm for biscuits, or Tourette's Syndrome.

"Biscuit!  Leave it alone, you'll only sick it up later!"

This was, it had to be said, a less than tempting way of offering people biscuits.

Ace, however, used her exceptional skills of observation to note that a) there were only scones, flapjacks and slices of lemon-drizzle on the table, none of which could be described as a 'biscuit', and b) Mrs. Bulwell wasn't even looking at her two guests, but at the floppy-eared dog that was over by the flower borders and doing its best to eat some tufts of grass that had escaped the lawnmower's last outing.

Mrs. Bulwell turned back to them and smiled.  "More tea?" she offered, back to polite and softly spoken in the blink of an eye.  Biscuit the dog, denied access to the grass, slunk off to sulk, but was immediately distracted by a game of chase-the-butterflies over by the Buddleia.

Ace and the Doctor were seated at a round, wrought-iron table set on an expanse of crazy-paved patio behind Mrs. Bulwell's thatched cottage.  The spring sunshine was pleasant.  The baked goods were homemade and seriously tasty, and the tea was proper tea with a bit of body, not that perfumed Earl Grey shit.  And there was plenty to look at that was very easy on the eye, never mind the chocolate-box cottage and the colourful flower borders, because the Doctor had slipped his jacket over the back of his chair and rolled his sleeves up.  Ace was trying not to be distracted by the dark hairs scattered over his forearms.

Of course they weren't just here for the sunshine and the afternoon tea.  Mrs. Bulwell was having a bit of a problem with her vegetable garden, where something decidedly odd was happening.

The Doctor, who looked about as pleased as it was possible to look in the presence of tea, scones and an English country garden, accepted a top-up from the teapot.  He leaned back in his chair and looked down the garden, past the shed and the pond and the path that led between, into the trees which separated the cottage garden from the area where Mrs. Bulwell grew her produce.

"Tell me, Mrs. Bulwell," he said over the rim of his teacup.  "Has there been news of a meteorite impact in recent times?"

Ace blinked, then shrugged and considered the tea tray.  She decided that one more piece of lemon-drizzle cake wasn't going to kill her.

"Funny you should say that, Doctor," Mrs. Bulwell replied.  "Just before all this nonsense started, it was all over the news feeds.  I'm surprised you missed it.  March, I think it was.  Apparently something crashed to Earth right in the middle of the North Atlantic.  There was quite the fuss about it, because it caused a big wave, you see.  Nothing like the Pacific tsunamis, but there was quite a bit of damage along the coasts of some of the islands.  The Azores, Bermuda, the Canaries."  She frowned in memory.  "There were some very odd conspiracy theories.  Turned out that the place where this meteor came down – it was slap bang in the middle of the ocean.  What's the word?  Equidistant, that's it.  Equidistant from all the closest bits of land.  To the very metre, as far as the satellites could work it out."

"Wow," Ace said.  "Weirdly accurate."

"Just as well, too, apparently.  The scientists were saying that the damage could have been a lot worse.  It's the biggest meteor impact in several hundred years."  She dabbed her mouth daintily with a cotton napkin.  "There's an international team being assembled.  They're going to work on some kind of protection system.  In space.  We can do that now, apparently."

The Doctor was nodding sagely.  "2054.  Sounds about right."

"I'm sorry, Doctor?"

He shook his head at Mrs. Bulwell.  "And you say you can't walk further down the garden than to this side of the shed?"

"It really is the oddest thing," Mrs. Bulwell said.  "I get so far, and then...well, I have to stop.  Sometimes it's because I've got these thoughts in my head about other things I have to do.  Other places I really, urgently have to be.  And sometimes it's much worse."  She leaned over the table and lowered her voice.  "A feeling of dread, Doctor.  Quiet, palpable dread."  She breathed shakily.  "I just know that if I take one more step down the path, something awful will happen."  She leaned back and spent a moment seeking solace in the restorative powers of tea.  Then she looked at Ace and beamed at her.  "How's my lemon cake today, then?  Some say I never make it sweet enough, but I prefer a good, tart zing, myself."

Ace swallowed her mouthful and grinned.  "Mrs. Bulwell, I'm not sure if I want you to marry me or adopt me, but it's definitely one or the other."

Mrs. Bulwell looked delighted.  Perhaps ladies in their seventies didn't get enough proposals of marriage.  She turned to the Doctor and said, "Your Ace likes a zing, then."

He smiled and said, "My Ace is the veritable queen of zings."

Ace decided that this was probably better than being the queen of tarts, and finished her cake.

~~~

The repulsion field became apparent near the shed.  Ace felt it as a nervous tension in her body, and half a step more resulted in a bout of nausea.  She stepped back.  The Doctor was looking at the screen of a scanner he'd cobbled together earlier in the workshop.  He said, "Hmm," and fiddled with some dials and a numeric keypad that had been cannibalised from a pocket calculator and looked as if it was affixed to the scanner with little more than Sellotape.

Ace breathed slowly to get rid of the nausea.  While she did so, something brown and white with floppy ears streaked past her, along the path by the shed and the pond and into the trees beyond.

"Biscuit!" came the worried if rather redundant cry from the distant patio, where Mrs. Bulwell was tidying away the tea things.

"Biscuit!" echoed the Doctor, less worried, more interested.  He tapped and fiddled with his scanner.

"What?" asked Ace.

"The dog wasn't affected by the repulsion field."

"Dogs like a lot of stuff that human beings are repulsed by," Ace pointed out.  "Have you ever smelled tinned dog food?"

"Hmm," the Doctor said, distracted.  Then, moments later, "Over here.  I need your ear."

Ace arched a brow, but carefully skirted the limits of the repulsion field to move closer to the Doctor.  This seemed like the perfect moment to flirt, or at least be a bit suggestive, but the problem with being in the middle of an adventure was that she tended to be too busy to think of the best things to say.

"You need my ear," Ace repeated.

"Hmm."

"Okay, so, I'll _lend_ it to you," she said.

"Hmm."  The Doctor fiddled, then lifted his scanner and pointed it at the earring Ace wore which usually tied her in to the TARDIS's security systems.

"You know – 'Friends, Romans, countrymen...'?" she pressed.

"Hmm."

She gave a theatrical tut-tut.  "Seriously?  One of about three Shakespeare quotes I even know, and I finally get to work it into a conversation, pretend I'm a bit educated.  And the best you can manage is 'hmm'?"

"Hmm."  He tugged on her earlobe and rolled it upwards to get at the reverse of her earring.

"Professor!"

"If you truly aspire to appear educated, I'd probably say, 'Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,'" he said, rather cryptically.

"What?"

"I thought we were playing 'let's quote _Julius Caesar_ '."

His fingers, as usual, were cooler than her body temperature.  And Ace had just remembered that her ears were, for some reason, quite sensitive to touch.  She squeezed her upper arms into her sides so that she didn't do anything embarrassing like shiver.

"Are we?" she prompted, confused by the whole conversation at this point.

" _Julius Caesar_.  It's where 'lend me your ear' comes from."  He lowered the scanner and peered intently at the stud through her ear which hid space-age electronics.  Ace could sense his breath against the side of her neck.

She swallowed and hoped she wasn't flushing up.  "Oh."

"Next time I'll stick to 'hmm'."

"Probably best."

He leaned back again and pointed his scanner at her, tapped a code into his haphazard keypad, twiddled a dial and then sighed satisfaction.  "Quoting Shakespeare is not indicative of education," he declared, turning the scanner on himself and pointing it at a button on his waistcoat.  "Merely familiarity with Shakespeare."  He tapped, twiddled, sighed again.  "There we are.  All set."

"Are you done with my ear?"

He turned to look at her, then he looked at her ear.  There was a weird pause where both of them seemed frozen in place, then the Doctor shook away whatever thoughts were going through his alien brain and said, "Yes, yes, all done.  On you go."  He gestured to the pathway.

"Oh, I'm the guinea pig now, am I?" Ace grumped.

"Come back here if you feel uncomfortable."

Ace rolled her eyes at him, then she took a tentative step along the path.

~~~

"Well that explains that," the Doctor said, as they stood in the corner of a sunny vegetable plot with oblong raised beds, most of them empty, and narrow gravelled paths between.

A couple of metres ahead of them a conical craft of silver-white metal had landed nose-first at a jaunty angle on what looked like a bed dedicated to growing asparagus.  (Ace was no gardener, but she had always considered herself an expert when it came to eating, and asparagus was kind of distinctive in appearance.)  Biscuit had been giving the craft a good sniffing at.  The spaniel now revealed himself to be of the male persuasion by angling his body and lifting his back leg, to sign his name across the craft's flank in time-honoured canine fashion.

"What's to explain?  It's a spaceship," Ace pointed out.  "We were expecting a spaceship.  On account of the distress signal."

"No, I mean the way Biscuit was unaffected," he said impatiently.  He stepped closer and pointed out a small set of characters near the nose of the cone with the tip of his umbrella.  "It's from Kalbaku."

"Is it?  Okay.  And?"

"They're a race that fled their home world millennia ago, relative to this timeframe.  Through an accident of galactic geography they found themselves right in the middle of a war between two of their neighbours.  Fortunately they'd already discovered faster-than-light travel."  He frowned.  "Odd to find them here, though.  Not sure I've come across any Kalbish in the Milky Way before."

"And this is relevant to Biscuit how?"

"Oh!  Yes, well the Kalbish would probably strike you as rather canine in their appearance."

"Dogs in space," Ace deadpanned.  "Didn't the Russians do that?"

The Doctor frowned at her.  "We're talking about highly intelligent dogs with a sophisticated social hierarchy, opposable thumbs, and about a million years of technological advancement on humanity."

"So – super-advanced dogs in space."

The Doctor tipped his head towards the craft and said, wryly, "Not at this precise moment."

"How big are they?  These Kalbish?"

"Fully grown?  Slightly smaller than you are."

"So how many would fit in there, then?"

"Oh, I doubt there was more than one in there.  It's an escape pod."

"Ah.  Okay then, so we're dealing with a single individual who probably didn't mean to land on Mrs. Bulwell's asparagus."

"Yes."

Ace remembered Ravi, the guy with the henna pots at Woodstock, who had turned out to be an alien refugee but who'd been happy to stay on Earth and live out his life.  She got the feeling this situation was a bit different.  "So will this Kalbish be dangerous?"

"Not necessarily.  Depends how frightened and traumatised it is."

"You think it's traumatised?"

The Doctor indicated the craft again and repeated, more emphatically, "It's an _escape pod_."

"Oh.  Right."  Ace looked up at the sky.  "Should we expect more?"

"The TARDIS picked up only a single distress call."

"Nothing from the bigger craft?"

"No."

"No other pods?"

"No."

She sighed.  "Poor sod.  Okay, so what do we do about this mess?"

"Well, it's a terrible shame.  Asparagus beds take years to cultivate to full productivity, and I don't think there's any coming back for this one."

"Professor!"

"You're the only one allowed to be flippant?"  He smirked at her and handed off his scanner.  "First we'd better find out if the repulsion field was an automated defence measure triggered by a fatal accident."

He made his way over to the side of the conical craft.  There seemed to be an access hatch set into the body of the capsule between the nose and the tail section, though how the Doctor was planning to open it was beyond her.  Ace wrinkled her nose at the implications of the Doctor's comment and glanced down at Biscuit, who'd come over to stand beside her and was nudging her hand.  She lowered to a crouch and offered the dog a scratch of his ears.  Biscuit wagged appreciatively.

"He's looking for a decomposing corpse," she explained to Biscuit.  "You know, I'd offer to help him but it's not exactly the roomiest of spaceships."

Biscuit huffed and placed his nose on her thigh.

"Yeah, you're right, mate.  Tell you what.  We'll just wait out here for now."

A moment later the Doctor, with one foot on a tail-fin and one scrambling for non-existent purchase against the rounded body of the craft, shouted, "Ace!  I need a leg-up!"

She sighed at Biscuit.  "On the other hand..."

~~~

In the TARDIS console room, an hour or so later, Ace remembered something she'd been going to ask.

"How come you knew there'd be a meteorite?"

The Doctor, having configured a space in the TARDIS big enough to contain the Kalbish escape pod, was now programming in a short hop across the solar system.  He huffed and tut-tutted about being asked to participate in a conversation, all the while scurrying about setting up coordinates and calculating parameters.

"Oh, come on.  You know you want to tell me," Ace cajoled.

He glared at her, but he didn't mean it.  Then he said, "It's quite a common tactic.  Think about it.  You're hurtling through a solar system, about to make an emergency landing on a planet that might not welcome you.  What's the first thing you want?"

"Um – oxygen and gravity."

"Yes, well, you can assume your escape pod has already homed in on the nearest planet that will actually support life.  Take those as read."

"Okay."  Ace thought about this, then she nodded.  "Right.  Next thing you want is the natives looking the other way."

"Quite so.  Most space-faring vehicles have attractor technology."

"Attractor–"

"Tractor beams," he said.  "Usually employing either graviton or laser technology."

"So the escape pod grabs itself the nearest big chunk of rock and chucks it at the planet first?  To distract it?  Charming."

"Well, you're quite right.  Sometimes it doesn't end well.  Sometimes the visitor has neither the technology nor even the basic preference to ensure the, er, 'big chunk of rock' will make planetfall in a way that doesn't obliterate a settlement.  Fortunately, in this instance, our missing Kalbish refugee bothered to minimise the risks."

"Why the North Atlantic, then?  Why not the Arctic Ocean, or somewhere even safer?"

"Because the capsule probably followed it down.  Used it as a partial heat-shield.  The capsule will have veered off at the last minute, heading for the nearest temperate zone for its Kalbish charge.  At that point the potential landing sites for the meteorite will have been limited."

"And how come our whacking big telescopes and observatories and things didn't spot it doing its veering?"

"Most space-faring craft tend to be built to evade primitive detection systems."

"Primitive detection systems like...?"

"Radar.  Light detection.  Things like that."

"So you can rely on the _primitives_..."  Ace paused, trying not to feel too miffed about the relative technological advancement of her species.  "You can rely on them to jump all over the meteorite and its impact site, but fail to notice the shiny white spaceship sneaking in through the fire-escape."

"Rely?  Oh, goodness me, no.  Usually in such situations you're hoping for the best.  Ready?"

Ace angled the internal scanner screen towards her and checked the channels she needed to monitor.  "Set," she agreed.

The Doctor shot her a swift grin.  "Go," he said, and threw the dematerialisation lever.

~~~

The empty escape pod had been reduced to dust, or at least it would be at some point in the next few years given the trajectory towards the sun that it now enjoyed.  Ace wasn't sure of the exact timing: a phrase which probably summed up most aspects of her life.

In the sunny vegetable garden, Mrs. Bulwell looked sadly at the small crater that used to be an asparagus bed.

"Seventeen years ago, it was, Mr. Bulwell began to cultivate that bed," she said.  "Every single garden centre we visited, all he ever wanted was to find somebody to talk asparagus."  She snorted.  "And look at it!  It was such a silly little thing.  Only four metres long.  They have fields and fields of the stuff in East Anglia, you know."

"Hmm," said the Doctor.

"It was his pride and joy.  Right up until those last few weeks when he couldn't get up and walk any more – right up till then he'd be out here every day, checking the crowns, testing the soil, preparing his covers."

The Doctor drew breath to say something.  Ace just _knew_ it was going to be about the process of cultivating asparagus.  She cleared her throat sharply.  The Doctor glanced at her and then closed his mouth.

"I tried to keep it going," Mrs. Bulwell said.  "For him.  For my Len.  I had rather a good crop last year, in fact."

A pause.

Mrs. Bulwell gave a quiet, broken laugh.  "I don't even like asparagus."

The Doctor looked mystified by this comment.  Ace rather thought that Mrs. Bulwell had just managed to sum up what it meant to love someone.  Perhaps Time Lords really didn't get love; not like that.  Not in the person-to-person total commitment sense.

A brisk sniff later and Mrs. Bulwell was thanking them profusely for giving her back her vegetable garden.  The Doctor tipped his hat to her.  Ace offered a hug, because that was the level of gratitude and affection that baked goods of quality engendered.  (And also because Ace was beginning to understand love in a way she hadn't until this point in her life, and Mrs. Bulwell felt like a kindred spirit.)

It was time to move on.  Their job was only half done, of course.  The craft had been empty when they'd investigated it.  All they'd managed to do was turn off the repulsion field and get rid of the awkward evidence.  They had yet to find the Kalbish individual who had managed to crash-land on Earth about six weeks ago.

Mrs. Bulwell said, "Oh!" and then rummaged in the pockets of her cardigan.  She produced two cards with peculiar black and white squares on them, like a bar code but more complex.  These she handed to the Doctor.  "Please do come.  It would be so lovely to see you both again."

The Doctor examined the cards, which turned out to be tickets.  "Maidstone 2054 – Active Dogs Championships," he read out loud.  "A competition?"

"I train the Edenbridge Darts," Mrs. Bulwell said with pride.  "Biscuit can't manage flyball, of course.  He gets distracted by his own shadow.  Dog's an idiot."  Biscuit, hearing his name from his pack-leader, trotted over and snuffled into her hand adoringly.  Mrs. Bulwell stroked the head of her idiot dog and gave every indication that Biscuit's intellectual shortcomings were of little concern to her.  "But the team's going well this year.  We're in with a chance."  Her eyes narrowed.  "Just so long as Melissa Cartwright in Tonbridge doesn't pip me to the post again.  Annoying female."  She met the blank stares that Ace and the Doctor were giving her.  "She's been talking up her team in the last few weeks.  All over town, it is.  Says she's got something special going.  It's all stuff and nonsense, of course, because the last time we raced the Tonbridge Tearaways they were nothing to write home about.  Slowest they've been in seven seasons."

"I see," said Ace, not seeing at all.

"So do come," Mrs. Bulwell pressed.  "Even if you aren't aficionados of flyball, there's plenty to enjoy.  Agility, heelwork to music, displays and demonstrations.  All terribly good fun."

Ace wondered how you told nice old ladies who fed you lemon-drizzle cake that you couldn't give two hoots about a dog competition; or at least, how you did so without offending them, anyway.

The Doctor looked curious and said, "Mrs. Bulwell, I think you can count on us being there."

It took Ace a further four seconds to realise that the Doctor had made some kind of connection between a lone, frightened and vulnerable canine-like alien, and a team of dogs suddenly competing at a higher level than they ought to.  By that time, however, the Doctor had bidden Mrs. Bulwell goodbye and was heading back through the garden.

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

_Exhibition Centre South East_   
_Maidstone, Kent_   
_July 2054_

 

"Professor," said Ace, voice raised to make herself heard above the cheers and shouts and encouragement of the crowd.

"Isn't this marvellous?" the Doctor called, smiling the smile that Ace usually thought of as 'eight year old having the best Christmas ever'.  (She _usually_ thought of it like that.  When she hadn't been trying to get his attention for three minutes straight and was starting to lose patience.)

On his other side, Mrs. Bulwell took his arm and pointed over to the nearest team.  "See the Springer, there?" she half-shouted.  The race was reaching its climax and the noise around them was deafening.  "Not even two years old, and every single time he pulls their knackers out of the fire."

Ace didn't comment on the way Mrs. Bulwell seemed to be taking every opportunity she could to grope the Doctor, nor the fact that it was just plain weird, listening to a woman in her seventies who favoured tweed, pearls and sensible shoes saying words like 'knackers'.

She didn't comment, but she did sigh.  Hard.  Neither the Doctor nor Mrs. Bulwell paid her any mind.  Probably because the sigh disappeared into the cacophony of cheering.

"Marvellous," the Doctor said again.  "I think this is my new favourite spectator sport!"

It was the third race in the standard set of best-of-three.  The score stood at one race each; the heat was finely poised between these two well-matched teams.  As they watched, the Springer Spaniel flew along the course, barely acknowledging the hurdles he had to jump.  At the end he pounced on the lever that would make a tennis ball shoot out at him, jumped to catch the ball, twisted in mid air, and already seemed to be running back the way he had come before his paws hit the ground again.  In a competition that seemed to be fought on the narrowest of margins, he'd probably earned his team a few seconds' advantage.  Not bad at all, especially since the team had been struggling to keep up after a mistimed start by the lead dog's handler.

Not that Ace was involved.  Or interested.  Obviously.

"Professor," she tried again.

Mrs. Bulwell called, "Far side, Collie-Whippet cross.  Keep your eye on her."

"They'll never catch up, now," the Doctor dismissed, as the final dogs in this relay race were readied, held back by their handlers.

"Keep your eye on her."  Mrs. Bulwell's hand was still on the Doctor's arm.  Ace told herself that to feel jealous about this would be ridiculous, and she was not prepared to be ridiculous, therefore she was not jealous.  And anyway, feelings of jealousy came about because of a sense of possessiveness, and Ace was not going to be _that_ woman.  The possessive type.  No way.  Not even when her relationship with the Doctor existed only in her dreams, her notebook and her game theory matrices.

The nearest flyball team sent another of their ubiquitous Border Collies along the course.  Almost four seconds later the Whippet cross on the far side hared off.  She all but streaked through the air, so fast and graceful that her form blurred.

"Speedy little bitch," Mrs. Bulwell grouched.  She had fifty quid riding on the Springer's team.

"Oh, I say!" the Doctor exclaimed as the Border Collie activated the ball mechanism and managed to position itself such that the tennis ball flew straight into its mouth.  It was astonishing no teeth had been broken, but the dog was happily racing back down the course.

The Whippet cross was faster, though; it was rapidly catching up.  The audience roared.  The gap between the two animals was a couple of metres, then a metre, then less and less and less, and then cameras flashed as the two dogs passed the finish line apparently simultaneously.

"Bangor Fliers," Mrs. Bulwell decided, as the crowd-noise began to calm down.  "By a whisker."

"The Springer's team?"

"Of course.  I don't place bets for fun, young man."  She smirked and hugged at his arm.  The Doctor smiled congenially.

Ace rolled her eyes and kept looking at the thing that had been bothering her for the last four minutes.

Waiting in the wings, ready to take part in the next scheduled heat, were the Skipton Supersonics and the Tonbridge Tearaways: the flyball team run by Mrs. Bulwell's local nemesis, Melissa Cartwright.  One of the Tonbridge dogs was a Boxer; this was apparently an unusual breed for the sport.

Now all that Ace really knew about Boxers was that they were jowled and soppy and very slobbery.  Midge's family had had one, back in Perivale.  He'd wanted the dog to make him look hard-as-a-bastard, but it hadn't worked because his little sister had got in there and bonded with the daft mutt when it was a puppy.  A young Boxer named Bugner (by Midge) had become a soft-as-shit family pet named Mr. Buggles (by everyone else).  Ace had often seen them out around the playing fields behind the school.

And here she was, seventy years later, in a great big exhibition centre in Kent.  Another jowly Boxer was wagging its tail and being petted by various stewards and handlers not three metres away from where she was currently sitting.  (These were, of course, the best seats in the stand, thanks to Mrs. Bulwell's status as one of the high-profile competitors.)  So Ace had a really good, really close view.

And that jowly, doe-eyed Boxer dog, with its lolling tongue and panted breath, was not leaking a single speck of drool on any of the people who got close enough to give it a quick pat.

Weird.  Very weird.  In fact, in the context of their visit to this event, borderline suspicious.

"Doctor," she said.  Because it was time to up the ante.

To his credit, the Doctor turned her way immediately.  It was, of course, their shorthand.  He was the Professor, right up until the moment things got serious.  Then he was the Doctor.  Both of them knew this.  Both of them respected the distinction.  Abusing it would have been like crying wolf, and Ace was not that stupid.

"Ace?" he enquired.

"Tonbridge.  Right?" she said, indicating the dogs that were waiting.

"Yes."

"Why we're here?"

"We're here to support Mrs. Bulwell," he said, shooting surreptitious sideways glances.

On the other side of the Doctor, Mrs. Bulwell seemed to be busy glaring at another elderly lady, this one chatting politely to one of the Skipton handlers.  Fair play to Melissa Cartwright: she was being pretty sporting with the opposition.  But Mrs. Bulwell wasn't impressed, from the look on her face.

"Something's not right," Ace told him, lowering her voice.

"Isn't it?"

"No!  That Boxer."

"What about it?"

"Well for a start, it's too big."

"It might be a crossbreed.  Pedigree isn't an issue in flyball."

"And it isn't drooling."

"Perhaps it has better manners."

She tried to contain the growl of frustration that threatened to emerge.  "You do remember why we're here, don't you?  Rogue refugee, frightened and maybe hostile, canine in appearance?"

"I remember," he said, sounding like a petulant eleven year old who'd been reminded he was supposed to do the dishes that night, even as he was settling in for a good old sesh on his Nintendo.

In the holding area, Melissa Cartwright finished her chat with the Skipton handler, patted the young man on his arm, bent to give his Border Collie a quick sniff of her hand before she ruffled its fur, then she moved on to say hello to another of her opponents.  The Boxer watched her move with big, adoring eyes, before he turned his attention to one of the Skipton handlers who came over to say hello.  The dog wagged amiably.  He was being held on a lead by a short, rather dumpy woman wearing the Tonbridge team T-shirt which showed a stylised silhouette of a dog leaping a hurdle; the handler's girth, alas, had turned the sprightly Collie silhouette into something that looked more like a wonky Dachshund.

Ace watched all this, wondering why her suspicions were prickling at her so hard.  "We've got a window of opportunity," she pointed out.  "They're busy right now.  We can check their kennels for clues."

"I suppose we could."

Ace sighed.  "Shall I take this one, then?"  Because, frankly, if she was asked to sit through another set of dog relay races she might just consider the possibility of faking an epileptic fit, on the off-chance that it would at least get her removed from the arena.

The Doctor glanced at the digital clock in the corner of the wall-mounted scoreboard.  "The races will begin in about five minutes.  About thirty seconds a race, with two minutes in between to reset the course – that's five and a half minutes if it goes to the third race.  Then they'll need five minutes or so to clear the hall."

"Call it fifteen minutes," she said, checking her watch.

"Be careful," he murmured.

Ace decided that he was not quite so oblivious as he'd seemed.  "See you later."  She stood up.

The match officials flashed up the finishing-line image from the last race on the overhead screens and called it a Bangor Fliers win.  Mrs. Bulwell chortled happily to herself and tucked her winning betting slip away in the pocket of her jacket that already held at least seven others.

~~~

Outside the arena, the passages and corridors were stuffed with visitors making their way to and from various events.  Most of them had dogs of their own.  (Ace could only assume people thought that their pets would enjoy the spectator sports as well.  Dog-people were puddled.)

She reached a junction near the competitors-only entrance into the flyball arena.  The Bangor Fliers were piling out, still celebrating their win.  To Ace's right, another passage led through to the expansive merchandise hall where you could buy doggie treats and doggie beds and doggie toys and doggie outfits and doggie pretty-much-everything-else.  Straight on were the holding kennels: another massive hall, this time with row after row of canine housing and enclosures, to provide space for the competing animals to take some downtime.  Ace headed down this passageway.  The flooring was dark, rubbery and moulded into little circles, almost like the TARDIS roundels.  Fortunately for her, the TARDIS never smelled quite so overwhelmingly of pooch and industrial-strength disinfectant.

She had, it seemed, acclimatised to the constant barking and yapping that overexcited dogs made when in each other's company.  Earlier that day she'd been convinced it would leave her with a massive headache.  Maybe the last four years had seen her become the kind of person who could always assimilate, even in the most hostile of environments.

She walked past the first few rows of kennels, most of which were filled with Golden Retrievers.  Some kennels contained a Golden Retriever _and_ the dog's adoring owner curled up with them.  Ace turned into the centre of the hall space, past three more rows, moving closer to the area she knew the flyball teams were housed because earlier that day Mrs. Bulwell had insisted on introducing both Ace and the Doctor to all the dogs and handlers in the Edenbridge Darts.  Every group of kennels had a little plaque on a stick denoting its intended team.  She walked past the Edenbridge kennels; they were empty, the Darts having already won all four of their heats to qualify for tomorrow's quarter-finals.

A short distance further along, on the other side of the makeshift walkway between kennels, was the plaque for the Tonbridge Tearaways.  All the dogs, including the two reserve animals that would step in if there were any unexpected injuries, were in the competition arena with their handlers.  Ace narrowed her eyes at the single person who was sitting on a deckchair in the fenced-off enclosure in front of the kennels.  The Tonbridge Tearaways had set a watch over their HQ: that seemed kind of suspicious in itself.

Ace had thought up a cover story.  Wringing her hands, she adopted an expression of dismay and made a beeline for the Tonbridge sentry.

"Excuse me," she said.  "Have you seen a Scottish Terrier?"

The woman in the deckchair blinked up at her, confused.  "Yes."

Not what Ace had been expecting.  "You have?  Brilliant!  Where?"

"I think there are a several over in that corner," the woman said, pointing.  She was about thirty years old, quite slight, with straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail.  She wore no makeup and was dressed in plain, unfussy clothing: this was a woman who cared more about her dogs than her appearance.  "They're doing the sniff-and-search competition, I think," she added.  "Terriers can be quite good at that."

"Oh!  Sorry, I meant my own Scottie," Ace clarified.  "He's gone missing.  Paisley collar, wild eyebrows, far too curious?  Answers to the name of Smithy.  He hasn't wandered by, has he?"

The woman frowned and said, "I've seen no Scottish Terriers in this part of the hall.  Sorry."

Ace sighed and leaned against the enclosure surrounding the Tonbridge kennels, trying to look as if her search had exhausted her.  "It's no good.  Every time he wanders off I tell myself that's it.  No more outings.  But he has this way of looking at me when we're cooped up in the house.  He always wants another adventure.  I always give in.  And every single time he slips his lead."

The Tonbridge woman did not seem hugely taken with the notion of conversation, but she was polite enough to make an effort.  She was probably one of those people more comfortable with dogs than humans; the Exhibition Centre was, after all, currently full of them.  "This has happened before?" she asked Ace.

"Oh, dozens of times.  More.  I mean, he always shows up again.  Usually when I least expect him.  But while we're separated..."  Ace shook her head.  "You know how it is.  You meet them, say hello, it's all fine.  Then, almost before you've had chance to get used to them, you realise – they're part of you.  Part of who you are.  Maybe the most important part."

"Yes," the woman said.  "It's a rewarding relationship."

Ace nodded.  "Certainly has its rewards."  She shook herself; she was getting too caught up in the fiction.  She pretended to look around for a moment, almost suspecting that a little Scottish Terrier with a paisley-print collar was about to come trotting up to say hello.  Then she contrived a double-take at the team plaque.  "You're the Tonbridge Tearaways."

"Yes," the woman said.

"I love flyball."

"It's very popular."

"But you aren't competing?"

"I'm a trainer, not a handler."

"Must be fun, though.  It always looks like a riot."

"The training's quite calm, really, compared to the races.  I have to steer clear of the arena.  I'm not overly keen on the noise."

Ace nodded.  "Yeah, the races can get noisy."  She leaned back, still scanning the area for her non-existent lost terrier.  "Just come from there, actually.  Thought Smithy was with me, but turned out he wasn't."  She pretended to startle.  "Oh!  The Boxer – that's your team, isn't it?"

The woman was starting to get nervous.  Fractious.  Maybe she just didn't like chatting; maybe she had something to hide.  Ace shot her a casual smile and let her eyes wander over the kennel enclosure, trying to pick out anything that could be a clue.  Anything that didn't belong.

"Yes," the woman said.  "One of our dogs is a Boxer."

"Unusual breed for flyball, isn't it?"

"Not unheard of."

Ace heard the sharpness in the woman's tone.  "Well he looks like a right sweetheart.  When I left the arena he had all the stewards and monitors and all the other helpers just eating out of his hand."

The woman frowned.  "Eating...?"

"Yeah, I know, probably should be more professional.  But when those big Boxer eyes look at you, all soppy and soulful?  Who can resist?"

"Ah.  Yes."

"My neighbours had a Boxer when I was growing up.  Lovely breed.  Bit smaller than your one, though."

"He's a cross.  Some Rottweiler in there as well."

"Oh yeah?  Well, he's gorgeous."

"We don't race him much, now.  He's getting on a bit.  Second reserve."

"He makes a fabulous mascot, then."  Ace tried a smile.  "Not even much of a drooler!"

The woman said, "That's a problem, actually.  Dry mouth.  He has diabetes."

"Oh.  Sorry to hear that."

"He shouldn't really be competing at all, but he's–"  The woman paused, glanced around, sighed.  She shook her head and finished with, "He's the head-coach's dog.  She likes to have him around."

"Ah, I see.  Boss always has the last word, eh?"

"Yes."

An awkward pause.  This conversation was becoming hard work, and Ace couldn't see anything at all in the Tonbridge camp that suggested one of their dogs had been replaced by a crash-landed alien refugee.  So she straightened herself up and offered the woman a nod.  "Well, I'd better get back to my search.  Although sometimes I think I should just sit down somewhere and let Smithy come to me."  She smiled at the woman.  "Nice to meet you, anyway.  Good luck in the flyball."

"Thank you," the woman said.

"Bye!"

"Wait a moment," the woman called.  Ace turned back.  The woman stood up from her deckchair; she was quite short as well as slight, since she didn't even measure up to Ace's five foot three.  "Why are you really here?" the woman asked.

Ace blinked.  "Um..."

"If your dog had slipped its lead, you'd be holding a lead," the woman pointed out.

Ace narrowed her eyes.  "It's in my pocket."

"I saw you earlier with the Edenbridge team."

"Yes.  Me and my friend, we're here with Mrs. Bulwell.  Is this about the rivalry?  I don't care about that."

"You didn't have a dog with you earlier."

Ace shook her head.  This exchange had got away from her way too fast.  "Look, sorry to have bothered you.  I have to get going."

"You're looking for me, aren't you?" the woman demanded.

Ace had already turned and taken a step away.  She turned back.  "For you?"

"You're looking for an alien fugitive."  The woman nodded at whatever she saw in Ace's face.  "I thought so.  Are you friend or foe?"

"Friend.  If by friend you mean someone who can get you off this planet and safely back with your people?"

The woman stared at her.  "I can't trust you."

Ace sighed.  "No.  It's never that simple."  She tilted her head to one side as she examined the woman.  "How come you look human?"

"I don't.  You just think I do.  It's standard technology.  Wouldn't you want to fit in?"

"S'pose so.  Look, we can help, you know."

"Maybe.  Maybe not.  I have a secure place for now, though.  I can help myself.  You are not worth the risk."

"Fine."  She didn't know what else to say.  It was time to get back to the Doctor and regroup.  He'd be able to persuade this refugee to let them help, even if he had to do the scary-percipient-roiling-storm thing.  "Do whatever you think b–"

The woman pulled out a metallic pen-shaped device from her sleeve and pointed it at Ace's face.  The device flashed a green light and gave a burst of sound that Ace didn't hear so much as feel.

"–been nice talking to you, then," Ace said cheerfully.  "Thanks for explaining."

"Good luck with your search," said the woman.

"Right!  Back to it.  See you!"

Ace wandered off, keeping up the pretence of looking for her Scottie.  She checked her watch.  Just over ten minutes.  She'd found exactly nothing.

Waste of bloody time.

~~~

In the arena, Mrs. Bulwell was spitting feathers.

"I've seen the Skipton Supersonics race dozens of times," she said.  "I've seen them all over the country.  They made the semi-finals at Crufts!  And yes, they're never the fastest runners, but what they are, every time, every _single_ time, is accurate!  Careful!  Their dogs do not drop the balls."

"Teams sometimes have a bad day," the Doctor said, trying to calm her down.  "Everyone does."  Almost to himself he muttered, "I know I do."

"All four dogs?  Both races?  Something is going on here," Mrs. Bulwell said firmly.  "Maybe I could accept Skipton are having a bad day, but don't forget, Doctor – in that earlier heat Tonbridge won, the one against the Guildford Gazelles, all was not as it should have been then, either."  She lifted her chin, thrust her shoulders back and looked vaguely triumphant.  "Was it?"

Ace sat down beside the Doctor.  He glanced at her in query.  She shook her head very slightly.  He sighed and turned back to Mrs. Bulwell.

"Were Guildford the dogs that kept trying to run around the side of the hurdles instead of jumping over them?" he asked.

"Yes!"

"You said they were newcomers to flyball.  Probably hadn't trained long enough."

"I know!  But really, in the light of this heat as well?  It's starting to look very suspicious.  Skipton should have beaten Tonbridge hands down if they'd both competed as well as they did back in March, at Peterborough."

The competitors were leaving the arena.  The Skipton handlers looked glum and a bit bewildered, Ace had to admit.  Melissa Cartwright shepherded her own team of dogs and handlers ahead of her.  Before she followed them out of the arena doors she paused and turned back to look at the spectator stands.  Her eyes found Mrs. Bulwell without fail, and a victorious smirk was sent their way.

"You see!" Mrs. Bulwell cried, grasping the Doctor's arm again.  "Really, it's just too plain.  Too obvious.  I must have a word with the officials!"

She tried to stand up.  The Doctor prevented her with a gentle arm.  "Please, Mrs. Bulwell," he said quietly, making her lean in to him, making her quieten down so she could hear him.  Good trick; Ace filed it away.  "These competitions are regulated, are they not?"

"Well – yes."

"The dogs are tested?"

"Of course."

"Full medical examination?"

"Yes!"  Mrs. Bulwell looked miffed.  "An annual check-up in order to renew your license for any competing animal.  And random tests at the major competitions."  She tut-tutted.  "The system has been in place for more than twenty years.  It's very rigorous!  It was brought in after the Crufts scandal back in the thirties.  We take the health and well-being of our dogs very seriously."

Ace arched an eyebrow.  "Oh yeah?  Tonbridge's Boxer has diabetes."

"I hardly think so, Ace," Mrs. Bulwell said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  "He wouldn't have been passed fit for competition, not at his age.  The rules are clear."

Ace opened her mouth and then closed it again.

The Doctor said, "My point, Mrs. Bulwell, is that if there is something nefarious going on then the officials probably don't have the means to detect it."

"But it's just not right!  It isn't cricket!"

Ace, for a moment, tried to imagine canine cricket.  It seemed an idea that was inherently problematic.

"Please," the Doctor said.  "Will you let Ace and me investigate this one for you?  We will be discreet, I promise."

"Discretion is our middle name," Ace put in.  (This was true at least until the moment when explosives were required.)

"We'll look into it," he pledged.  "See what we can find out.  I think you already know that we have a few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to the investigation of peculiar incidents."

"All right, then," Mrs. Bulwell agreed.  "And if you find something out about that-that harridan Melissa Cartwright?  There's an entire lemon-drizzle cake in it for you."

Ace smiled.  Defeating bad guys and helping the lost and hopeless was usually its own reward.  But baked goods definitely sweetened the deal.

~~~


	3. Chapter 3

_Maidstone, Kent_   
_July 2054_

 

"So what do you think?" Ace asked the Doctor as they walked back to the TARDIS that evening.  "Scout around Melissa Cartwright's house?"

"Hmm.  Perhaps."

"Come on – we have to do something!  You promised.  And you were in the arena for that last heat while I was off discovering exactly nothing.  Did it look suspicious to you?"

"Frankly it looked dubious in the extreme."

"Well then.  So where do we go next?"

The Doctor huffed.  "We can't turn up at Ms. Cartwright's house and demand to search the premises.  Everything else besides, she's seen us sitting next to Mrs. Bulwell all afternoon.  I hardly think we'd be welcomed with open arms."

"So we'll be sneaky."

"Yes."  The Doctor tut-tutted.  "Sneaking around undetected in a house full of dogs – that's a sensible plan."

"All right, Mr. Sarcastic!  Can't you, I don't know, scan for something?  Alien life-forms or whatever?"

"If I could do that then I'd have done it when we found the escape pod.  Most non-human life-forms are still basically oxygen and carbon and hydrogen and so on.  I need something more specific."

"What about technology?"

"I've already matched this timeframe to the appropriate level of Kalbish technology.  Nothing is being flagged by the TARDIS."  He sighed.  "And if the refugee is using technology from another era of Kalbish development?  That gives me a million years of evolving science to choose from.  Needle in a haystack."

"Right."  Ace frowned, struggling to come up with another idea.

"It's a conundrum," he acknowledged.  "But unless our refugee has built a transmitter that even now is sending a big Kalbish SOS into space, I'm going to struggle to use the TARDIS to pinpoint them without a bit more information."

"Okay."  Ace glanced up at the dusky sky.  The evening was getting late and she was pleasantly full of Chinese food because Mrs. Bulwell had insisted on treating them to dinner.  The old lady was probably feeling flush after all those winning bets.  "Okay, so I take it you have actually checked for the SOS?"

"Of course I have," he said irritably.

She sighed.  "We'll just have to keep our eyes open tomorrow, then, right?"

"That would certainly be a good start."  The Doctor nudged her shoulder with his own as they walked.  "Did you enjoy the events today?"

"'Enjoy' would be a bit strong," Ace admitted.  "'Enjoy' is a word I'd save for, I don't know, seeing Hendrix live or watching Charlton get promoted."

"Ah."

A pause, as both of them recalled that those events had been organised by the Doctor when he'd had one eye on Ace's potential demise on Colonis.  But they'd already gone through the post-Colonis trickiness, so Ace moved on.

"I'm not a huge fan of dogs.  Or of people who are into dogs, 'cause you have to admit – some of them at the venue, they're seriously weird.  Dressing their mutts up in stupid costumes, treating them like babies.  Kind of cringey."

"Is that really a problem?  As long as they're not hurting anyone."

Ace shrugged.  "S'pose.  Live and let live, yeah?  Hey – maybe I'm getting tolerant in my old age."  The Doctor met her words with a snort of disbelief, and she hid a smile.  "Fact is, I'm not a dog-person.  Not really a pet-person in general.  But, you know, I didn't hate today.  I mean, you've got to be impressed with some of the things they can do, right?  Not the racing and the jumping and stuff.  But the helping?"

"Yes.  The displays from the assistance dogs were remarkable."

"So – what about you?  Did you enjoy it?  'Cause you definitely looked like you were having fun."

"Yes.  It's always nice to experience new things.  I think my favourite was the heelwork to music," the Doctor said.

Ace smirked.  "And if they'd been heelwork-ing to Black Lace rather than Dave Brubeck, would you have been quite so impressed?"

The Doctor scoffed.  "Never would have happened.  Dogs have sensitive hearing.  Bad music would offend them."

"Ah!  So you admit you know who Black Lace are?"

"I'm assuming – since it was _you_ who made the comment – that they are one of the more embarrassing popular groups who released records during the nineteen eighties."

"Yeah, you can't fool me.  You've definitely danced to _Superman_ in your time."

"Have I?"

"I mean, I'm twenty years old and I despise novelty pop.  And _I've_ done it.  You're nine hundred plus.  I do not accept you can be alive that long and avoid Black Lace entirely."

"No?"

"It would just be weird."

"I do a lot of things that some consider weird," the Doctor said mildly.

"Yeah, I know."  She grinned at him.  "Why do you think I stick around?"

They reached the TARDIS.  The Doctor fished in his pocket for his key.

"I don't know.  Why don't you tell me?" he suggested.

With that, the mood of jovial banter between them shifted.  His voice had lowered and become intimate, though it was impossible to know whether he'd done it on purpose.  Ace was, for perhaps the first time since her gazebo-dream, faced with an opportunity that was too good to miss.  A complete and utter _open goal_ of an opportunity.

Why did she stick around?  Because there was nowhere in the twelve galaxies she wanted to be except right here next to the Doctor.

And now she could tell him.  She could even do so in relative safety, because _he_ was the one who'd asked.  She opened her mouth to speak.  The Doctor was looking at her, eyes of deep-ocean blue.  Her heart beat hard in her chest.  She thought she must be juddering with every pulse.

"I..." she whispered.

He waited.

Panic surged, right up from her gut; it felt like gastric reflux.  Ace coughed, felt her cheeks darken.  Then she snorted the fakest laugh she had ever heard herself give and said, "TARDIS or Perivale – which would _you_ choose?  Numpty!"

She put her shoulder into the unlocked door and pushed through.  The console room smothered her panic with its calming white, and brought Ace up short.  For a moment it seemed as if the craft was calling her a nitwit in some intangible, metaphysical way.  But Ace was probably overworking her own imagination.

Behind her the Doctor said, "Ace–"

A flash.  More than a flash: an explosion of light which blinded her eyes and then seemed to penetrate right into her brain.  She tried to close her eyes against it but she didn't have eyes to close any more.  She wasn't in the console room; she was nowhere, everywhere, tossed around in the light.  The whole of her being was made up of stray thoughts and feelings, a sort of essence that was the idea of Dorothy McShane.

It was over before she had a chance to react with anything like alarm.  She was corporeal again: arms and legs, eyes and ears.  Her body was her own and she could hear the sounds of the TARDIS that told her she was safe, although for an instant she wasn't sure which way was up and which was down.

Had something just happened?  Some kind of attack?  Or was it an hallucination brought on by emotional stress?  A psychotic break?

Thoughts flooded through her.  Not thoughts; _memories_.

She staggered.  Hands grasped her shoulders from behind to steady her.  She heard a noise and realised it was her own voice, keening with a pain that wasn't quite physical but was still very present.  Her knees buckled but she didn't fall; the hands at her shoulders had shifted their grip.  She felt herself lowered to the floor of the console room.

Moments later the light and the pain and the monumental weirdness had faded.  The Doctor was sitting behind her on the floor, holding her head steady in his hands.  She pulled away, awkward now, and scrambled around to face him, still a little clumsy with her own limbs.

"What happened?" he demanded.

Ace paused before answering, blinking, considering, then she said, "I _think_...I think the TARDIS just fixed my memories."

The Doctor's brow creased hard, and his eyes went to grey.  "Something had tampered with them?"

"Can she do that?  The ship?"

"It's her job to do that.  If there has been an intervention."  He startled and winced and waved a hand, presumably remembering their conversation in the library about interventions.  "Not _that_ kind.  A hostile one.  Um – may I?"

She hesitated a moment while the Doctor's hands reached for her.  Did she really want him messing with her thoughts?  Especially since two minutes earlier she'd chosen to be flippant and dismissive when she could have told him how important he was to her, and she was already regretting that missed opportunity so thoughts like those were bound to be at the very front of her mind.

Sod it.  If that was the way he found out then so be it.  She nodded and closed her eyes.

His fingers touched her temples.  "Relax for me, Ace."

"Yeah, easier said than done," she murmured.

"Just breathe.  Is there any pain?  Discomfort?"

"No, no there was but it wasn't, you know, physical.  It's gone now."

"Good.  Breathe.  That's right.  We're in the TARDIS.  Nothing can touch us in here."

His voice was hypnotic.  Ace found herself relaxing.

"Good.  Now, what are you remembering?  Show me what was hidden."

She conjured the image of a small, nondescript woman in a deckchair.

"I'm remembering her," Ace said quietly.  "The Kalbish refugee."

~~~

 

_Tonbridge, Kent_  
_July 2054_

 

On the eastern edge of the town of Tonbridge was a farmhouse.  (So far, so utterly unsurprising.)  Most of the farm's land had been sold off in parcels over the last forty years to neighbouring farms and to property developers.  The site was now home to some boarding kennels which made use of the two outbuildings that the property had kept hold of.

Melissa Cartwright ran this business and lived in the farmhouse.  The buildings had all seen better days.  The business was not doing well.  Her kennels had been the unfortunate (or, some might say, deserved) victim of an undercover report initiated by an intrepid fifteen year old worker whom Ms. Cartwright had paid barely half the minimum wage to muck out the concrete kennels and take the canine residents for walks.

The teenager's report on working conditions, boarding conditions and business practices had gone viral on its social media platform, been picked up by the local news and then by the nationals.  At the peak of this infamy the boarding kennels had been investigated by the RSPCA, which had failed to find hard evidence of maltreatment because Melissa Cartwright was not stupid and had made some obvious changes as soon as she'd realised that all publicity was most certainly _not_ good publicity.  But even so, in the three years since the story had broken the business had been – to use the corporate language of capitalism – on its arse.

Ace informed the Doctor of this background as they walked along a country road towards Cartwright Kennels, the full moon overhead providing enough illumination that she didn't need to fish out her torch.  While the Doctor had busied himself with working out how to scan for the alien technology she'd been able to describe, she'd used the time to do as much research as she could.  (On twenty-first century Earth this was quite a lot, thanks to the way the TARDIS could access the internet.  Ace might have missed out on the birth of the world wide web thanks to a time storm in her bedroom, but the four years since then had seen her visiting near-future Earth often enough that she'd got her head around humanity's information revolution.  It was pretty insane, really, how much personal information people would make available on even semi-public forums.)

"I thought this woman loves dogs," the Doctor said.  He was staring at his scanner: the same one he'd used to detect and examine the repulsion field in Mrs. Bulwell's garden.  It had now been adjusted to detect and examine the perception-altering disguise that the refugee was wearing.

"She loves _her_ dogs," Ace said.  "She won junior Crufts back in 2008 with one of those tiny pointless dogs – can't remember the name.  Little squashed face.  Anyway, that kind of got her started.  She made a bit of money off that, set herself up as a breeder for a while.  Then it tailed off because she got married and moved to Brixton, to this flat where they couldn't keep pets.  Only her husband turned out to be an arsehole and she dumped him and came back to Kent, tried to get another business going."

"Ah.  An attempt to recreate the success of her youth?"

"Probably.  She did okay for a few years.  Bought the farmhouse partly based on the maintenance payments from her divorce.  Established the kennels, ran agility training, got the flyball team going.  That Boxer cross?  He was the lead dog in her team for two years.  There's pictures in the local newsfeeds.  And she's got a Staffy that won best of breed at Crufts about six years ago that she still studs out."

"But she doesn't treat the kennels' guests very well."

"Think she's a bit strapped for cash.  Those divorce payments stopped when her ex disappeared.  She reckons he faked his death, did a runner.  Formal records state that he snuffed it in an avalanche in France.  Either way, Ms. Cartwright's income took a dive."

"Do we know anything more recent?  Since the escape pod crashed?"

Ace shook her head.  "Sorry.  There's an interview with Kent On-line from about two months ago, where she's talking up the flyball team.  Says she has a secret weapon and then gets all coy.  I'm guessing that means our Kalbish woman."  Ace frowned at herself.  "That's a good point, actually.  Is the refugee female?  Since it adopted a human female disguise?"

"Hmm.  On the balance of probabilities, I'd say yes," the Doctor said.  "Lies come easier the more they resemble the truth."

She nodded.  She'd used that technique herself on plenty of occasions.  "But they do have two sexes?  The Kalbish?"

"Most intelligent species do.  Simplest way to introduce genetic variation during reproduction.  Have to have variation, or you get into all kinds of trouble."

"Do the Kalbish people have..."  Ace hesitated and frowned, trying to remember the language.  She'd been doing a lot of reading about this kind of stuff of late.  "Sexual dimorphism," she said, pleased with herself for remembering.  "You know.  When the males and females look different in ways that aren't just about their rude bits."

"Not as such," the Doctor said.  "Not like humans, where males tend to be bigger than females and grow hair in different places."

"Or Time Lords," Ace pointed out, seeing an opportunity to learn something genuinely useful.  "I mean, yeah, you're not exactly playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, but you definitely have the potential for beardyness.  I've seen you all stubbled."

"I can grow a beard if I want to," the Doctor agreed.  "But we're talking about the Kalbish.  The males and females are of similar size and appearance.  Rather like dogs, actually, for any given breed."  He glanced at her.  "Why the interest in evolutionary biology?"

"I was just wondering," she said.  "Our refugee might have chosen the human-female disguise because human females are smaller.  Might be a closer match to their actual size, you know?  But under the disguise the refugee might be male."

The Doctor thought about this.  "It's a good point.  Technology that presents an image based on altering the perception of the viewer does rather rely on a confluence of dimensions."

"Right!  I mean, I'm guessing an elephant-sized alien might be able to project an image of a small human female, but they'd still struggle with the deckchair."

"Exactly so.  Well!  Let's find out, shall we?"  His scanner was emitting an unobtrusive signal and had a flashing line on the screen that was oriented towards the right hand side of the road.  Up ahead was a battered-looking sign near a gated driveway which read 'Cartwright Kennels'.  "This way, I think."

"Really?" Ace said sarcastically.  "Never would have worked that out."

"Now, now."

"Seriously, though.  I get why we had to land the TARDIS out of doggie-earshot.  I don't mind the walk.  But the TARDIS already pointed us at this address.  Did we really need the scanner?" Ace asked.  "I can read a map, you know."

"My scanner beeps," the Doctor said loftily, and strode ahead.

Ace knew she had it bad.  Things like that didn't even irritate her any more; they just made her chest go warm.

~~~

The Doctor's scanner was, as it turned out, very useful indeed as soon as it directed them past the outbuildings – from which a couple of not-very-happy barks could be heard – and then past the farmhouse itself, into the extensive back garden of the property.  At the end of the garden was a rather dilapidated wooden structure which looked as though it might, in better times, have deserved the description of 'summerhouse'.

Ace checked her wristwatch, which she'd synchronised with local time.  It was nearly midnight.  She glanced back at the farmhouse.  No lights showed.  She wondered how a houseful of dogs was failing to kick up a storm about intruders in the back garden.

"There's a dampening field," the Doctor murmured to her, alternating his gaze between the summerhouse and the scanner screen.  "Probably because the animals nearby would be too attuned to the Kalbish refugee otherwise."

"Is she awake?" Ace asked.  "The refugee?"

"She is," said a voice from the summerhouse.

Ace peered in that direction, trying to pick out different shadows in the moonlight.  A moment later a green light flashed at both of them and she blinked.

"Yes, sorry," the Doctor said affably.  "I've protected us against your little memory-fiddler.  May we come in for a chat?"

~~~

"How did you end up in the Milky Way?" the Doctor asked.

In the last ten minutes the Kalbish refugee, whose name was Meriol and who was indeed female, had gone from hostile to resigned to cautiously accepting.  They all sat on plastic moulded garden chairs in the small wood-built room.  The summerhouse had been swept clean and contained a canvas camp bed with a green sleeping bag and, on a shelf to one side, an array of futuristic devices.  The room was lit by two portable lamps.

"We were on a salvage mission.  Actually we were done.  Travelling back to the moons of Ishangar in the Ulpreth system.  The people of Morestra have allowed us to colonise there."

"Morestra, eh?  Post-unification, I'm guessing."

"Oh, by quite some margin.  You know Morestra?"  Meriol, still projecting her human-female disguise, raised her eyebrows in question.  Funny to think there was a canine alien under that image.

"Never been there.  Met a few Morestrans though.  Geologists, mainly.  So your mission was over?"

"We had a derelict craft in tow.  The Morestrans have been generous, but we're still short of many resources as we colonise, and we don't have a home planet that can send us useful shipments.  Setting up long-term infrastructure takes time, so we've been scavenging where we can."

"I see."

"Only the craft we were hauling back for parts and materials turned out to be far from benign."

"Oh?"

Meriol shook her head.  "There was a comms burst just before everything went wrong.  We'd scanned for life signs, obviously, and for power reserves.  The thing had been dead in the vacuum when we'd picked it up.  But whether it was a crew member or an AI, whatever was on there woke up, noticed us and opened fire.  Didn't even give us the option of replying to their signal."  She frowned as she looked into the distance.  "Our scavenger was a sturdy little beast with excellent towing capacity, but it wasn't a war ship.  We didn't stand a chance."

A pause, while Meriol remembered her shipmates and Ace bowed her head in acknowledgement.

"Yes, so, anyway, about half a dozen of us made it to the escape pods," Meriol went on.  "Not that it helped.  The weapons on the derelict – the one that wasn't as derelict as we'd thought it was?  They were like nothing we've ever seen before.  Powerful.  Destructive.  They didn't just rip through our scavenger; they ripped a hole in the fabric of space itself.  Some kind of wormhole, I suppose."  Meriol hunched in on herself.  "Anyway, I was the lucky one.  My escape pod fell through this rip, and as such, managed to avoid getting obliterated."

"My condolences," the Doctor murmured.

"Took me a while to work out where and when I am," Meriol added.  "Different galaxy.  Different timeframe."  She straightened up, finding a courage that Ace thought was impressive given all she'd been through.  "But I'm alive.  And I intend to stay that way."

The Doctor nodded.  "There are worse places you could have ended up than on twenty-first century Earth."

"Indeed.  They're primitive, but not without potential."

Ace said, "Oh, cheers very muchly."

Meriol blinked at her.  "I intended no offence.  I didn't think you were a native."

Ace frowned.  "You didn't?"

"Your...companion isn't human."

"What gave it away?" the Doctor muttered.

"Your heartbeat," the refugee said, taking the question literally.

"You can hear it?" asked Ace.

"I can hear a lot of things that you cannot.  It's one of the reasons I can't go into the racing arena."

"Oh.  Right."  She found herself smiling, leaning forward.  "Seriously?  You thought I was the same race as the Doctor?"

"Your heartbeat is not the same.  But you seem to have more in common with him than with the humans I have encountered.  I thought perhaps the females of his species had a cardiovascular system that had developed differently."

"Yes," Ace said solemnly.  "Sexual dimorphism."  Beside her, the Doctor tutted.

Meriol huffed at herself.  "I should know better than to make assumptions."

Ace nudged the Doctor.  "Get that!  People are mistaking me for a Time Lord."

He twitched a slightly unruly eyebrow.  "You wouldn't be so pleased if you'd met as many as I have."

"Oh, I've met the important one.  That'll do me."

They smiled at each other for a moment, before the Doctor seemed to gather himself and turned to the Kalbish woman.

"Right then," he said.  "One trip to the moons of Ishangar, coming up.  You can provide the coordinates and timeframe?"

"I can."

"Much to pack?"

"Just what you see."

He stood up.  "Let's be on our way, then.  Shall we?"

"Wait up," Ace said, because the Doctor had clearly forgotten something.  She leaned in.  "Not being funny or anything, Meriol, but do you know anything about the woman in the farmhouse making her opponents in flyball do weird stuff?"

~~~

They leaned on the wall at the front of the property, waiting for Meriol.  The moon had dipped in the sky and its light was now filtered by the tall stand of trees on the brow of the hill to the south.  Ace was getting tired.

"Is it true, then?" she asked quietly.  "Dogs know what you're thinking?"

"Of course not; not the ones we've been watching in the arenas.  But they are more sensitive to the emotional state of the humans around them than some might think.  Give them a few million years to evolve, and that sensitivity might become a genuine empathic skill."

Ace nodded.  It had been galling to realise that the very moment, yesterday afternoon, when she'd opened her gob and trotted out some fabrication about a little Scottish Terrier, Meriol the space refugee had _known_ she was telling porkies.  Still, this ability to see through deceit had provided Meriol with quite the insight into Melissa Cartwright.

Meriol had given them the whole tale, now.  For the first couple of weeks after her capsule had crashed into Mrs. Bulwell's garden, Meriol had walked the roads of Kent, sleeping rough and cadging food through the cunning use of her alien tech.  She'd been, she admitted, in a state of shock and confusion.  Slowly she had managed to pull herself together.  She'd seen a van in Tonbridge with a picture of a canine on the side.  She'd tracked it to this address and approached Ms. Cartwright for work, which she'd been offered when all she had asked for in return was somewhere safe to sleep and one meal a day.

Meriol had met the dogs of the Tonbridge Tearaways shortly afterwards.  She'd stepped in to help train, having already demonstrated that she had an uncanny ability to communicate with dogs.  And she had subsequently elevated the flyball team to the giddy heights of genuine competitiveness by means of the simple but expedient device of explaining to the dogs what the point of the competition actually was.

( _'If I could talk to the animals...'_   Ace sort of wanted to break into song.)

Of course, it hadn't all been smooth sailing.  Melissa Cartwright had worked out that her new and conveniently cheap employee was far from human on the morning when Meriol had forgotten to activate her disguise in good time.  Oops.  Ms. Cartwright, after a brief interlude spent freaking out, had decided to turn the situation to her advantage.  She'd demanded something from Meriol in exchange for the safe haven she was providing.

Which was why she now owned a technology-infused ring that was far beyond current human science, and which gave her a limited ability to communicate ideas and commands to dogs.  Ideas like: 'Hurdles will hurt you if you don't run around them!' or 'It's important to run as slowly as you can!' or 'Don't forget to drop the ball after you've caught it!'

Meriol did not like Melissa Cartwright.  But she'd liked the idea of being reported to Earth's authorities even less, and had considered mild cheating in the arena of a flyball competition to be a small price to pay for her own security.  Now she'd been offered safe passage away from this strange alien planet, back to her own kind, however, it was time to reclaim the item she had given Ms. Cartwright.

She was in the farmhouse right now, using her perception-disguise and maybe her memory-fiddling device and goodness only knew what else to get it back.  And Ace and the Doctor were tucked beyond the gate, waiting for her.

"What about cats?" Ace asked.  "Do they have mind skills?  You like cats."

"I like most intelligent creatures," the Doctor said.  "But cats don't know what we're thinking.  Mainly because they don't care."

"Hmm."

There was a pause.  From the distant stand of trees an owl hooted.  Ace grimaced and pulled her jacket closer around herself.  She'd never been a country person.

"I was an idiot," she said suddenly.  "Earlier."

"How do you mean?" asked the Doctor.

"When you asked me.  You know.  Why I stayed with you.  What I said – it was just bravado."

A brief pause.  "Oh."

Ace nodded.  She looked away from the Doctor.  The darkness and the quiet and the fact that in a minute Meriol would be back again made this a little bit easier.  But only a little bit.

"Thing is," she said, "I stay with you 'cause I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.  Not in the whole wide universe."

"You haven't seen it all yet," the Doctor said.

"Yeah, well, it's going to take something pretty spectacular to make you and the TARDIS look like the booby prize."

There was a touch at her hand.  The Doctor wrapped his fingers around her and he squeezed, then he let go.  She turned to look at him.  He smiled gently.  Ace decided that this particular smile would henceforth be known as: 'Crumpled alien proves he can be the most beautiful thing I've seen in my whole life.'

Behind them, a door closed too loudly.  They jumped in unison, then looked into the front yard of the property to see a large Boxer dog racing across the yard to join them.  The front door of the farmhouse was flung open again and Melissa Cartwright peered into the night.  She was wearing the kind of flannel nightgown that would have seemed old-fashioned in 1986, never mind 2054.

"Get back here, you little bitch!" she yelled.

With a shake of its head, the dog morphed as it ran until it became bipedal.  Meriol in her natural form was, Ace had to admit, impressive.  She was covered with blue-silver fur, had pale golden eyes and delicately canine features.  She vaulted the wooden gate in a graceful, fluid bound, then she dropped something into her hand from her mouth and said, "I'd run if I were you."  With that, she was racing off down the lane.

Ace and the Doctor shrugged at each other, then they started running too.

~~~


	4. Chapter 4

_Exhibition Centre South East_   
_Maidstone, Kent_   
_July 2054_

 

Melissa Cartwright's face was purple with rage as she was escorted from the hall.  Ace thought that the expression Ms. Cartwright now wore could probably be used in dictionaries, to illustrate the definition for 'apoplectic'.

It was mid-afternoon, half an hour before the flyball quarter-finals were scheduled to begin in the competition arena.  For Ace and the Doctor it had already been a very busy day.

"It's all her!" Ms. Cartwright shrieked, trying to twist round and point the accusing finger at Mrs. Bulwell in the Edenbridge Darts kennel area.  The two uniformed escorts were actually quite gentle as they turned Ms. Cartwright back and prevented her from gesturing.  They couldn't gag her, though.  "You mark my words, that sour-faced old bitch is behind this!"

Mrs. Bulwell blinked in confusion.  Further down the walkway between enclosures the rest of the Tonbridge team watched, equally stunned, as their boss left the hall, not entirely of her own volition.  Some of the team were already beginning to pack up their stuff, weary rounded shoulders, heads shaking in disappointed disbelief.  The team had been disqualified from the competition, and the Skipton Supersonics were taking their place in the quarter-finals as the fastest team Tonbridge had beaten yesterday.

"How did you do it?" Mrs. Bulwell murmured.  She was clinging to the Doctor's arm, and had been since the confrontation between the competition officials and Ms. Cartwright had begun ten minutes earlier.

"Do what?" the Doctor asked, offering his wide-eyed innocent look.

"Nothing to do with us," Ace added.  "Way I heard it, someone reported that Ms. Cartwright had been faking her Boxer-cross's medical tests to hide his severe diabetes."

"Oh.  Oh!  But that's awful!  That poor dog!"

"Yup."  Ace nodded, looking solemn.  "Her own vet had a crisis of conscience."  Actually he'd been encouraged into coming clean, but that was hardly the point.  "He admitted he's been taking bribes, helping Ms. Cartwright switch out the urine samples.  They used her Staffy for a while, but he got kidney problems.  So they just used random boarders at her kennels.  Turns out the most recent one she used had a condition.  Van Helsing or something."

"Cushing's," the Doctor helpfully provided.

"Yeah, that.  Anyway, the evidence seems to be mounting up.  Doesn't look good for Ms. Cartwright."

"Indeed," said the Doctor.  "I suspect she will be permanently banned from competing in flyball."

"Not to mention the fall-out for her business," Ace added.  "You need a licence to run a boarding kennel.  They don't look kindly on people who try to cheat the system."

"And as for this weekend's competition," the Doctor said, "I heard that the chief steward is looking closely at all pre-race footage from yesterday, since he seems to have been convinced that Ms. Cartwright was in physical contact with all the opposing teams' dogs.  Somehow he's been convinced that nobbling was afoot."

"Nobbling," Mrs. Bulwell echoed faintly.

"Appalling, if it's true," Ace said reproachfully.

"Very unsporting," the Doctor agreed.

"Just not cricket," Ace said.

"Will it be proved true?" Mrs. Bulwell asked.

"Who knows?" the Doctor said, making very hard work of looking ingenuous.

Ace snorted.  She leaned in to Mrs. Bulwell and said, "I think you said there was a lemon-drizzle cake in it for us?"

Mrs. Bulwell used her spare arm to grasp Ace's.  She pulled her in close and said, "Consider it done.  But can I win today's championship first?"

Ace grinned.  "We'll be cheering you on."

~~~

In the semi-finals, the Edenbridge Darts and the Bangor Fliers won a race each and had to run a third.  It looked as though it was all over when one of the Edenbridge handlers mistimed their dog's release and a foul was committed, with the dog entering the course before the previous dog had cleared it.  Beside them on the seats, Mrs. Bulwell groaned and then swore like a trooper.

But then the Fliers made exactly the same mistake, meaning that both teams had to run an extra leg.  It was close, very close, but then the Darts had it by a nose.  A very wet dog nose, as it happens.

With that, the Darts were in the final.  They were up against the Skipton Supersonics, who had recovered from their bizarre race against Tonbridge the previous day.  (The ring Ms. Cartwright had used to influence the dogs' behaviour had been effective only for about ten minutes after it was used.  On finals day, the dogs were back to being their normal racing selves.)

The Doctor and Ace and Mrs. Bulwell all shouted themselves hoarse from the spectators' area.  Alas, it was not to be.  The Supersonics won the final two races to nil.

When the shouting had died down, and Mrs. Bulwell had gone to congratulate her team on a well-fought competition and to commiserate with them about missing out on first prize, Ace leaned against the Doctor's shoulder and sighed tiredly.  Between the events overnight in Tonbridge, the frantic to-ing and fro-ing while they set up Ms. Cartwright's comeuppance that morning, and then, rather importantly, the need to run Meriol back to the Artoro galaxy, Ace had been awake for the better part of thirty-six hours.

"All seems a bit pointless, really, doesn't it?" she said.  "Dogs and tennis balls and a lot of noise."

The Doctor's shoulder moved against hers as he shrugged.  "People enjoy it.  That's not pointless."

"People enjoy lots of things, some of them really stupid.  So that's no yardstick."

"Hmm.  Perhaps not."

"You should see the car-park outside The Duke's on Scotch Common, Friday nights.  Always at least one fight.  Most consider it a spectator sport.  And that?  That is totally pointless."

The Doctor gestured over at a young woman from the Edenbridge Darts who was currently being hugged by Mrs. Bulwell.  "That's Natasha.  Did you meet her?"

"Um, think so.  Yup."

"She never got to complete her university degree because of mental health issues.  A shame, because she has a talent for graphic design."

"Rough deal," Ace acknowledged.

"Yes.  She's quite severely agoraphobic."

Ace blinked.  "Um – she's in a crowded arena."

"Yes she is.  Took her a fair few years, first working on her own with a dog, then in a small group, then a bigger one.  But it gave her a confidence she'd lacked.  It got even better when she joined Mrs. Bulwell's team.  They were all very patient with her, very supportive.  The first time she risked a competition arena, she lasted all of thirty seconds.  But she kept trying, and she kept doing better, and now here she is today.  Being a part of this has helped her overcome her problems."

"Well – good for her.  Good for the team."

"Not pointless, then?"

"Well obviously not."  Ace tutted and rolled her eyes.  "And don't patronise me."

"Didn't intend to."

There was a pause.  Ace slumped into her chair.  "You're right, though.  Sometimes I get judgemental."

"Everyone does," the Doctor said.  "Humans.  Kalbish.  Time Lords – good grief, especially Time Lords.  Judgemental is so easy.  So comforting.  Forcing yourself to consider new perspectives – that's rather hard work."

For some reason, the conversation no longer felt as if it was about the value or otherwise of a flyball competition.  At least, not for Ace.

"That," she said, "is true enough."

"For the record," the Doctor said, "you are one of the least judgemental human beings I have ever met.  You do not judge by appearance.  You despise bullies and always want to help the downtrodden.  You are stout of heart and tenacious of spirit, and you even have the courage to question yourself."

"Okay, okay, don't overdo it!"  She was blushing.  "I'm not that impressive."

"You're Ace," he said.  "Technically, you were a gift from a god."

"An evil god."  She tutted at herself.  "Sorry, was that judgemental?"

The Doctor chuckled.  "Fenric wanted to destroy the Earth with chemical weapons.  I think that counts as one of those occasions when you aren't required to see things from his perspective."

She laughed as well.  Then the laughter faded and she frowned in thought.  Her head turned in to the Doctor's shoulder and she said, "Is that the first time we ever laughed about Fenric?"

"Hmm.  I think it might be."

"Wow.  Time really does heal, doesn't it?"

His voice was quiet and sincere when he said, "Fortunately."

Mrs. Bulwell returned to the stands at that point, rendering further conversational detours impossible.  In the competition area the stewards were setting up the prize-giving ceremony.

"I've told them all that second place is a marvellous achievement," Mrs. Bulwell informed Ace and the Doctor as she re-took her seat.  "Hopefully when the disappointment fades, they'll be pleased with how they did."

"You don't want to go and get the prize yourself?" Ace asked.

"Oh, goodness me, no.  I wasn't down there in the thick of it.  This is their moment."  Mrs. Bulwell looked over at the group of handlers and dogs, now mingling with the Supersonics and the Bangor Fliers, who had won the race-off to place third in the competition.  "I'm so very proud of all of them.  They're a marvellous group, you know.  Just marvellous."  She turned to the Doctor and Ace.  "Coming second to a team that won, fair and square?  That's fine by me.  And it's all thanks to you lovely people!"

"We didn't do much," the Doctor assured her.  "This achievement is all your own."

"Well, maybe so, but we had an agreement.  Would you be available to stop by my cottage at Hever next weekend?  I'll have your lemon-drizzle ready."

"Oh," said the Doctor.  "Really, it's–"

"We'll be there," Ace said.

Home-baked goods were not ten-a-penny in this life of planet-hopping adventure, after all.

~~~

 

_Hever, Kent_  
_July 2054_

 

"There you are," the Doctor called to Ace, as she stepped out of the patio doors and on to the crazy-paving.  "I was about to send out a search party!"

Ace grinned his way.  "Sorry.  Stuff to do."

"Oh yes?"  He waited, but the errand Ace had decided she needed to run was not for his ears just yet.

"Where's Mrs. Bulwell?" she asked, evading his question.  "Oh, I see her – I'm just going to go and say hello."

Mrs. Bulwell greeted Ace like an old friend and set her up with a glass of wine, since this was an early-evening soirée rather than tea-on-the-patio.  All the team members of the Edenbridge Darts were present.  There were also a few other people there who looked familiar.

"Not being funny, Mrs. B," Ace said, "but you seem to have some Tonbridge Tearaways in your lovely country garden."

Mrs. Bulwell smiled widely and handed Ace a plate for the buffet.  "Look over there, by the wallflowers.  See the plump lady in the blue T-shirt?"

Ace looked, and recognised the woman she'd seen with the Boxer for the Tonbridge Tearaways.  "Yup?"

"That's Donna.  Admirable woman.  She reached out to me after the trickiness at Maidstone last week.  Said the team had been uncomfortable with the way that Cartwright harpy had been running things for a long time.  She was very apologetic, actually.  So I told her I was happy to help her find new facilities, all that kind of thing.  Flyball dispensers aren't cheap, you know, and without Melissa Cartwright the rest of the team didn't have access to the equipment."

Ace smiled.  "You're helping your old enemy."

"Oh, the team was never an enemy.  The team's just another group of people who love flyball.  We all agreed, all of us in the Darts – we've got so much in common, so we're going to be as supportive as we jolly well can.  Well – except on race days, of course.  Now!  Sandwiches at the far end, middle for sausage rolls and these gorgeous little pastry things with salmon – those are courtesy of the remarkably talented Natasha.  This end for pudding.  Do help yourself.  And your lemon-drizzle is in the kitchen, ready for when you and the Doctor head off."

Ace shook her head.  "You are just the best, Mrs. Bulwell."  She sighed happily.  "Don't suppose you gave any more thought to my proposal of marriage, did you?"

Mrs. Bulwell rolled her eyes and tut-tutted theatrically, even though she looked pleased as punch with the comment.  "All very well, you saying that, young Ace, but anyone with eyes can see there's no point trying to come between you and the Doctor.  No point at all.  Thick as thieves, the pair of you.  Thick as thieves!"

Mrs. Bulwell wandered off, then.  Ace heard her call "Biscuit!" in a disapproving way.  No doubt the spaniel was trying to eat something he should not.

Ace went to contemplate the sandwiches.  "Thick as thieves," she muttered to herself.  "S'pose so."  She wrinkled her nose at her own thoughts.  In the months that had gone by since Colonis, she seemed to have spent an awful lot of time planning and calculating and hypothesising, none of which had enjoyed any real pay-off.  "Definitely thick, anyway," she grumbled under her breath.

"What are you grinding your teeth about?" the Doctor asked from just behind her.

"Thieves," she said, pretending that his nearness had not made her startle.  "And being thick.  Have you had some butties?"

"Not yet.  Can we share your plate?"

"You don't want your own plate?"

He looked sheepish.  "I'm not good at buffets.  I run out of hands.  It makes me feel unprepared.  For eventualities."

"Typical."  Ace raised her eyes to the blue summer sky.  "The heavy lifting in this partnership always falls to me."  The Doctor twitched one wild eyebrow at her and gave her the puppy-dog eyes.  "Fine.  Come along, then, Smithy.  Let's get you your din-dins."

The Doctor started pointing out his choices of buffet-fare.  "You're insulting me," he said.  "And I don't even know how or why."

"Good," Ace said.  Her plate was stacked high and she turned around.  "Right then.  I'm going to say hi to Natasha.  If you want these sarnies you're coming too."

~~~

"Before you both go," Mrs. Bulwell said, when it was just the three of them in the front hallway of her little cottage, "I hope to goodness you won't be offended, but..."

Ace was cradling a Tupperware container which held a large and rather gorgeous-looking lemon-drizzle cake.  So Mrs. Bulwell handed off the envelope she had prepared to the Doctor.

"What's this?" he asked.

"A thank-you," Mrs. Bulwell said.  "You did a lot of good here, the both of you.  More than perhaps you know.  Cartwright Kennels is being put up for sale.  The Tearaways will do much better under Donna's stewardship.  And our future flyball competitions will be unsullied by the taint of cheating."

"We did none of this for a reward," the Doctor said, looking uncertainly at the envelope he now held.

"Apart from the cake," Ace put in.  "I totally did it for the cake."

Mrs. Bulwell smirked at her, probably because she knew Ace well enough by now to recognise when she was indulging her propensity for bravado.  "And then there's the other business," she added.  "You certainly didn't have to do that."

Ace frowned.  "What other business?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," the Doctor said, with minimal credibility.  "Really, Mrs. Bulwell–"

"If you don't want it," the old lady said, gesturing at the envelope, "then find it a good home.  I suspect you and Ace are experts at that kind of thing.  Now – off with you both.  The world is no doubt full of 'peculiar incidents' that need your attention!"  She made a little shooing motion with her hands.

The Doctor paused, then he tucked the envelope away and took one of Mrs. Bulwell's hands.  He lifted it to his mouth, kissed it gently and smiled.  "Goodbye," he said.

Ace went the hug-route, even while encumbered by Tupperware, since kissing Mrs. B's hand would have seemed a bit odd.  While the Doctor was busy opening the front door, she murmured, "What other business?"

Mrs. Bulwell pulled back and beamed at Ace.  "No idea how he managed it, but at some point in the last twenty-four hours my asparagus patch has been repaired, levelled and re-planted."

Ace smiled slowly.  Maybe the Doctor had more of a handle on love and loss than she'd given him credit for.  "The old softie," she whispered.

"Hang on to that one," Mrs. Bulwell whispered back.

The Doctor said, "Come along, then, Ace," and marched through the open front door.  The tips of his ears were bright red.

Ace shrugged a shoulder, kissed Mrs. Bulwell on the cheek, then followed the Doctor out into the summer evening.

~~~~~~


End file.
